Reviews

****SOME SPOILERS**** When I first heard that War of the Worlds was going to be released into theaters, I immediately thought, "Great. Someone's remaking the old classic and turning it into the action movie of the year. Pshaw." However, then I saw the trailers and realized that it wasn't remaking the movie--it was adapting the book. The book itself is a thrilling, eerie, frightening story of human nature and it's reaction to a hostile alien threat. Things that were left out of the original were the red weed, the black fog, the alien tripods, and the main character himself--a man, desperate to get back to his wife, whom he'd sent to the hills for safety.

This version of War of the Worlds is the most fabulous and faithful I've seen. The few changes that were made were perfectly acceptable--modern times being the most obvious, as the book was set in 1890s England. What few items were left out--like the black fog the aliens used to suffocate the humans--was all right, as they made the aliens invincible instead of vulnerable, like in the books. Also, the aliens themselves were changed, but were still perfectly awful--also, it paid homage to the old movie, with the eerie suctioned hand dragging itself out of the ship as it died.

The mobs in the movie had to be the creepiest and scariest part of the movie, simply because they were a little too close to reality than one would like to think. People like to imagine that they'd be rational if something like this happened, and like to think that they wouldn't be so animal as to attack people and turn upon them just to get something that they didn't have. However, history has shown the opposite. The brutal nature of the mobs in the movie was chilling and frighteningly accurate--quite possibly the scariest moment of the movie Morgan Freeman as the narrator was an excellent choice--he had already proved himself to be a marvelous narrator with his performance in The Shawshank redemption.

Tom Cruise portrays a tortured man, desperate to save his family and get back to his ex-wife--everything was perfectly in line with the main character in the book.

Tim Robbins was a combination of two of the characters and played them excellently--a man driven insane by the loss of his family and the prospect of being completely drained and used as fertilizer.

Overall, I give the movie nine stars--it was an excellent source of entertainment as well as horror. Very well done.

*MINOR SPOILER ALERT*

FvJ is definitely made for people who love slashers. Pitting the two decidedly heavyweights of the slasher world together, it delivers the gore and keeps the plot visible. Not only that, it asks the classic question that every fan or even hater of slashers wants to know--"Why won't you DIE?!"

What would a slasher be without sexuality? Amazingly, this one manages to lace it into the movie, but not brutally. It doesn't beat us over the head with the sex, even though it does have it.

Language, particularly strong. Most unnecessary--but hey, slashers are meant to have lots of things be unnecessary.

Blood content--oh yes. That's what they are loved for--intense, copious, somewhat unrealistic amounts of blood spurting out of people. Wonderful--loved it all. Every scene with blood was very much well worth it.

Played the slasher rule "You smoke pot, you are going to die immediately" very well, as well as the "You have sex, you are going to die immediately" rule.

Favorite line? Tie.

"Oooh!! Tilt." "The first time...tends to get a little...messy."

Favorite scene?

The battle on Jason's home turf. Freddy's face when he realizes that he doesn't exactly have advantage anymore is marvelously done.

Overall, I give it a seven--it's a slasher, so it is, of course, not going to be like "The Godfather" or "The Matrix." But, as a slasher fan, I must give it a good rating.

Um, may I have that hour of my life back?

*SPOILERS*

You know, for a spider that doesn't even move its legs when it runs, it's pretty dang speedy. And it's abdomen...it's made of a trashbag? Or, what? And it looks like an ANT. A big, giant, badly made ANT. So much for giant spiders.

Three cheers for laying eggs in people. Huzzah, huzzah.

This movie is worse than a bad porno. Please, if you like your eyes the way they are, don't watch this movie. To quote Larry the Cable Guy, "This movie could make Ray Charles flinch."

Okay, here are some serious spoilers, so don't read this if you are really anxious to watch this...though I truly doubt you do.

Hank and his girlfriend Tina are having problems. He decides to bring her to the beach. You know for a date. Well, while they are there, she decides to show her true ambition to Hank and these sissy bikers, one of which is a French guy (Crow: "It made sense to surrender. The Germans were very very mean."). She wants to be a stripper.

Well, while this exciting plot piece is unfolding, a boat is dumping radioactive waste into a quarry. They sink faster than anything I've ever seen, one falls over, and the lid falls off. The stuff leaks out and gets all over skeleton down there, he breaks out, grows hot dog weenies out of his mouth and becomes a horrible, terrifying.....thing. We're working on the name of these....things.

Meanwhile, Tina is ready to audition for her dream. She proceeds to take it off in front of the lead biker, and Hank is not amused. He throws her away and the lead biker gets all mad and they fight. Gay men are thrown around and eventually the fight ends. Tina tries to make amends with Hank but he won't have any of it. So she runs off to a small island just off the coast near, you guessed it, the same place the radioactive...stuff....leaked out and made the.....thing.

While she's out there, Hank hits on a dubbed girl, this band plays dumb music and all the beach people, one of which looks like a Romulan, dance a really stupid dance. But Tina isn't doing it. One point for her.

However, she's about to lose them all, because our terrible thing comes crawling up and attacks her, slowly moving down on her while she screams and sits there, waiting patiently like a good victim. He smears paint all over her stomach and kills her.

There's some stuff that I'm sure was important, but I was too busy ignoring it and waiting for it to be over, so I'll just go on to the next part I remember.

Hank goes out with his dubbed girlfriend, who has a maid who believes in voodoo. They go out to the beach, where everybody's cranky because Tina's dead and there's no action. How dare she get herself killed, we still wanted to have FUN. Well, things pick back up, while people get picked off the face of the earth by the...things. Yes, there are more things now. They don't say how more things come about, but they do.

Eventually they are all killed by sodium, which you can touch now without protection according to this movie, and everybody lives happily ever after the end and don't watch this unless it's on MST3K because it's funny.

Now, I am a snake lover. I love snakes of all kinds, even when they are in my house. It pains me to kill them or see them killed. And when I heard this movie would be out, I thought "Uh oh." But I watched it anyway. Please beat me. Allow me to point out everything that went wrong with this tripe. And these are spoilers, by the way.

1) Anacondas have never gotten any bigger than 40 feet on record. How big was this one?

2) An anaconda is a very muscular predator. It can kill a crocodile by SUFFOCATION NOT BONE CRUSHING. Any snake, as a matter of fact, does not have the power to crush bones or pop veins. They just don't. They just suffocate their prey by compressing their lungs and windpipe.

3) Although they are very stong, it is impossible for the snake to pick up a human being, lift it up, and swallow it upright. They can't. It has to do with physics and biology.

4) It takes a snake a very long time to swallow its dinner. It can take up to an hour for it to swallow a crocodile. And that means that it would take nearly 3/4 of an hour to swallow these people. If it felt compelled to go after them, first of all.

5) A SNAKE IS NOT A FISH. It cannot stay under water for that long, and it does not go after the smell of blood. A snake hunts by sight and the smell of the animal. They made this snake out to be a shark. And even if they did go after blood, that monkey was dead. They go after movement.

6) A snake will vomit its food if it feels threatened. It serves a confusion tactic for enemies. Did this snake feel threatened? No. And when they do vomit, it does not fly out like that guy did.

7) Do you know how long it takes a snake to digest a meal? When a python eats a boar, it goes without food for almost a year. That means that that anaconda would be pretty well-fed after the first victim.

8) An anaconda does not kill for the fun of it. They leave that to humans.

9) An anaconda will not let go of its current prey, which is still alive, and go after something dead. They know better.

10) An anaconda can climb trees and move very quickly. They do not fly up pipes.

11) And, lastly, an anaconda is not invincible. I think shooting it in the head will do it in. You will not need to torch it and take a pick-axe to its head.

This was tripe, as I said before. Do not watch this. Just to tell you how bad it is, I think that it was pretty worthy of the MST3K bunch.

Actually, there is no invasion.

*SPOILERS, ALTHOUGH I TRULY DOUBT YOU WILL WATCH THIS*

One day, ole farmer whateverhisnameis and his drunken wife saw a meteor come crashing down to earth. Well, they saw a lot of red light flashing and a big wind. They went trapesing along through their field, where it landed, and found a bunch of dead cows. And these weird round rocks, that look like oversized rabbit-pellets. Anyway, they found a big hole in the ground that had something glowing in it. Naturally, they ignored it and went inside to crack open one of the rocks. They did, and inside were diamonds and Boris the Spider. Boris somehow managed to crawl away unnoticed, while the guy and his drunk wife collected more of the rocks. Well, soon, their were dozens of Boris's wandering around the house, making webs and causing trouble.

Well, one night, the drunk wife was home alone and there was a giant Boris in her sock drawer. She ran to the place where certainly there would be no spiders: a damp dark place! How odd it was that there, in the rafters, was Big Daddy Boris. He ate her.

Well, her husband didn't care, more diamonds for him anyway, and went along with his business. Odd none of the townspeople took notice. Anyway, while he was digging around for more rocks, Big Daddy Boris decided that the drunk wife was not enough, and, with the help of pulleys and wheels, devoured the husband too. Well, THAT wasn't enough either! He attacked the dang house too. Big Daddy Boris isn't very happy, is he?

Well, while all this was going on, there were some dippy scientists working on a theory on why there was a weird, uh, thing going on around the place. They soon discovered that the cars with giant pipe cleaners and pom poms, aka Big Daddy Boris, was coming from a black hole caused by the meteor! Ah ha!

So they went to investigate the hole in the ground. Unfortunately, Big Daddy Boris wasn't fast enough in devouring them and ending the movie for us. But, he did give us a good hill-rolling scene.

So they decided to try and stop them (finally!). But, Big Daddy Boris wanted to cruise town and look for appetizers, so he did. He did the most outlandish thing and smeared red paint all over everybody and had the nerve to bite into somebody's ink pen! But, he decided that he'd had enough and went home to his hole. The dippy scientists were waiting. However, there is something funny: the woman's scream. It'll make you roll. She screams because in the toolbox are a bunch of Boris's. They had taken up residence and not told anybody. But, in the end, Big Daddy Boris turns into a big heap of what looks like rotting ice cream.

Don't watch this. If you do, however, feel compelled to do so, watch it with Mike and the Bots only, please.

Good Lord, what were they THINKING??!!!!!! Here is your spoiler warning, even though I don't think it'll really matter. You won't be seeing this piece of trash anyway.

A group of handpuppets go chasing after a group of really stupid people, who go on a really stupid hunt for them to try and kill them, and the puppets complicate things by letting them live out their really stupid fantasies. In other words, the whole thing is really stupid.

You KNOW it has to be bad when even Mike and the Bots can't save something!! And they didn't! I know, some of their lines were funny, like what to add to the sign "HIT" and the hand comments, but, geez, this was pretty dang sad.

All I can say is DO NOT WATCH THIS PIECE O CRUD. IT IS NOT WORTH YOUR EYES.

Yes, he is indeed!

*SPOILERS*

Pompous Agar and Ward and The Load go down in a hole and get trapped when a guy gets hit in the head by falling rock. They find themselves in front of a cavern that isn't natural, or, as Tom puts it, "a perverted UNNATURAL cavern!" They go down it and a mole hand pokes out of the wall, which, of course, they don't see, because the Load has the vapors. They have to practically carry the fat guy all the way down to a big 'ol painted backdrop where they take up residence right where one of the moles pops up to say HEY HO. Well, after a good shot of Venus the Nothingo, moles come and put sacks over their heads, dragging them into the ground and putting them in a room where they will be nicely kept docile. Well, here's three lines from the greatest MST3K episode to ever hit TV that explains the next scene.

Crow: TERROR ELVES!!!!

Tom: Oh, you never would believe where those Keebler cookies come from!

Mike: Santa will see you now.

Yes, the terror elves come down with their little wooden swords and Peter Pan outfits and take the three away to their king, Lieutenant Crown-Roast and his priest, Alfred the Butler, who wears a snood. They decide to kill them, and the three don't take partial to this idea. Well, John the Pompous A** shines a flashlight on 'em and melts some elves, because they run away from 'light that is slightly brighter than what [they're] used to, NO!!!' Uh-huh, they do. And so that begins the fact that they now think that the three are gods and John the Pompous A** loves to cultivate this image. Anyway, yadda yadda yadda, there is some stuff in between all that, but it really doesn't matter, does it? Just remember that John knows everything. He does, he can explain things just like he's known it forever. Interesting, no?

I gave it three stars, partially because it is the genre of B movies, and it deserves it. And, I give it **********/***** for the MST3K version. This has got to be their finest. It has hilarious lines, especially about the entire Load section, and, well, to sum it up, it is a da** fine thing to laugh at. You gotta see it!!! Watch it with Mike and the Bots, but only with them.